Sawmill Rookie in Alabama, here....

[Tusk]

Hiya, fellas!

I've been lurking here from some time and finally decided to join up.  I appreciate the add!

I live in rural East Central Alabama and have recently acquired a new sawmill capable of cutting 16' (I also have a 6' extension).  I've been whacking down some pine trees and cutting them in to Cants/Beams.

My next step is to build a sawmill shed.  I have 6 nice phone poles and would like to cut beams, rafters and purlins...  I'm leaning to maximizing spans and centers as much as possible.  I am well versed in dimensional lumber framing table and techniques, but I struggle with comparable rough sawn load calculations.

Is this the proper forum to get advice on timber sizes for the aforementioned?

Thanks so much!!!!!

TUSK in Alabama

[Don P]

Welcome to the forum.
Scroll down the page and watch the column on the left. At the bottom is a red toolbox, click it. Scroll to the bottom of that and there are beam and column calcs. Like you I had tables for commodity lumber, but I had a sawmill in a very diverse forest. Jeff let me store the calcs here where everyone can use them. At 5x5 and larger use the heavy timber calcs or design values, there is a derate for heavy timber.

[Tusk]

Thanks for the swift response, buddy!

I think I ran the calcs correctly...

15' beam span. 14 rafter span. 30# load.

3x8 beam! ???

Thanks, again!

[Don P]

That feels wrong, lets look.

I'm assuming a shed roofed building with half the rafter, 7', bearing on the back wall or beam and half, 7', bearing on the 15' long beam we're looking at. So a tributary area bearing on the beam of 7'x15' = 105 square feet.  

105 sf x 30 lbs per sf = 3150 lbs total load uniformly distributed along the beam.

Hit this calc;
Design for Bending (forestryforum.com)

I get a fail at 3x8 in #2 SYP
I get a pass at 4x12 or 6x10... but I might be misundertanding the problem.

[bushhog920]

Man not another one from Alabama lol just south of Montgomery here. Been looking at this website might want to look at just buying a set of plans and skip all the guess work.

Timber Frame HQ - Plans, Kits, Joints, Tools and More

[Iwawoodwork]

A sawmill shed is a good first build, that way you can use the Designer/learning phase lumber that you will produce during your learning curve and it won't matter if  a bit wavy , thick or thin.